


Inquiries into the viability of cheap soap and cranberry cookies as remedies for PTSD &c, by Dr Banner

by arthur_177



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:38:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_177/pseuds/arthur_177
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They may not need the Other Guy every day, but years of experience in science have taught Bruce a lot about what makes people and laboratories not only function, but excel. A couple of months with the Avengers has taught him that they both have a place here, and that he needs the others just as much as they need the Other Guy, and him.<br/>Even if Tony choses to express his gratitude with questionable commissioned paintings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inquiries into the viability of cheap soap and cranberry cookies as remedies for PTSD &c, by Dr Banner

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for an Avengers Kinkmeme prompt that asked for Bruce and Domesticity, had bonus points for frilly apron and feather duster, and kinda run away to be something not quite what the prompt asked for, although it has the above points. 
> 
> Warnings for movie spoilers, non-fix it scenario (hence canon character death and Clint in a rather bad shape), additionally what might be read as implied PTSD in the Tasha-Bruce interaction, despite all the sadness moments of random fluffiness, and the image of the Hulk in an apron brandishing a feather duster. 
> 
> For your additional information, cherry varenje is made by mixing sugar and fruit 1:1, leaving it to stand overnight, and then cooking and bottling it; there is nothing better like proper Russian tea out of a Samowar with homemade cherry varenje to turn a bad day into a good day, so I thought I'd share this wisdom via the means of fiction. It seemed appropriate for the mood of the thing.

On one afternoon, Bruce sits down and calculates the statistical probability that anything about a group such as the Avengers, given their profession and respective personalities, could be described as 'routine'. Unsurprisingly, it is very low.

Surprisingly, once Stark Tower has been rebuilt and taken over as the official Avengers Mansion, settling into a statistically unlikely routine is precisely what happens. Then again, Bruce knows a bit about what science says and what ends up happening.

The Chitauri attack has welded them into a team, and while there are so many forces at work that should cause repulsion and imbalance in the conglomerate of billionaire playboys, defrosted supersoldiers, green rage monsters, Gods, and two agents who will not take kindly to being referred to as the normal part of the mixture, it holds and it works. And the humanity of that moves him, much like the people looking out for each other amid crumbling houses and disease moved him, even if this world of luxury and gadgets Tony has built around them is a far cry from the slums and the cholera.

And so they work together, and they live together, and it works, even if the sheer domesticity of the times when they are off missions seems to be harder to cope for some than their day jobs. (Tony takes to it like a fish in water, of course. Tony is Tony, he is the quintessential Renaissance Man, if the definition entailed being as at home at a cocktail party as in a battle as covered in grease underneath a car with a mug of coffee too close to his elbow. But he is also at home among people, so slowly the edges of his mocking soften a little, and he doesn't point out the blatantly obvious things. And that, more than building a 40s style gym despite complaining that it ruins the whole futuristic layout of the building, more than tacitly giving Clint access to some areas nobody apart from Pepper, Tony and himself has access to because all Clint needs sometimes is a high place and a ventilation shaft cutting across all of Tony's secret labs to get there, is Tony's way of falling into a routine with them. And so he doesn't say anything when Steve watches re-runs of old movies telling tales about a life he was never meant to have, or about the way Clint and Natasha sometimes look mortified and in shock when they catch themselves acting as if this was home, this was a safe place (Natasha curled up on the couch, half asleep, with the tv running – the couch is a bad position, no direct view to the door, open to attack from the window and the atrium -, Clint allowing people to approach from behind when his bow or gun are just out of reach – he can be there in seconds, but not before an attacker could get the first hit in, and first hits are crucial for assassins). Thor of course is Thor, so when he visits, it's as if the joviality of a hall full of happy, hospitable vikings descended upon the mansion, and nobody, not even Clint (who has been burned by something he could not control and is reminded every time he beholds a sign of Asgard, who Bruce knows cannot sleep without dreams full of blue ice, green eyes, so much blood, who is the only one who actively seeks out Bruce on a bad day, as if understanding what Bruce and the other guy have could allow him to come to terms with his ice-blue eyes), has it in him not to smile and laugh and drink with him).

Bruce has not quite decoded which piece of the equation he represents, but as each member of the team slowly settles into a role in their off-mission dynamic, he realizes that both he and the other guy have a place here. And thus, when there is no smashing required, and the mansion is silent because Tony is working or Iron Man or drinking expensive things in a tuxedo (and emailing him photos and ideas and thoughts because underneath their respective baggage they are both scientists, and the understand each other), and Clint is shooting things to save the world or to destroy the targets on the range or to make whoever is running the target stalls at whatever fair is nearby miserable (on one particularly bad day, Clint slept outside, with dreams full of blue eyes and green and gold, and he stabs the man in the suit in the heart as his master orders him to, and the man in the suit bleeds over his hands, telling him that he knew it would come to this, that he never trusted him. Clint starts awake sobbing and doesn't stop until the Hulk cradles him in his arms, carefully, like a broken toy, and murmurs a litany of 'Puny god gone. Hawk sleep now, Hulk smash bad dream.' until Clint passes out into a dreamless sleep. The next morning, Clint is remarkably unshaken by waking in the arms of a half-naked Bruce and thanks him. For some reason he decides to thank the Hulk by winning the biggest fluffy animals any fair has as prizes. Turns out the Hulk really likes big animal plushies.), Bruce learns things about all of them.

And thus, on the days when Please-call-me-Steve-Captain America and Natasha 'Don't pull a Sitwell on me, Bruce, we've been through enough to be on first name basis' Romanova run past him without a second glance to pick up their respective armour and save the world, when Agent Hill follows suit giving him that tight smile that tells Bruce everything he will ever learn about her feelings with regards to the Avengers and the fact that someone stubbornly replaces 'Agent Hill' with 'whoever Fury sent to replace Phil Coulson' in the security clearance database - on those days, Bruce opts for domesticity.

In a house owned by a billionaire full of robotic butlers and self-cleaning objects there isn't that much to do, granted, but then he is a scientist. He knows that labs run not only because there is cleaning staff and all equipment is regularly checked and all chemicals replaced, but also because one of the work benches has a pen with green ink and there is a box with cherry-flavoured sweets in one of the drawers. Bruce applies his expertise in science, laboratories and handling difficult people, and he takes notes and stocks the lab as required.

And thus he optimizes a recipe for white chocolate and cranberry cookies because of the way Steve's eyes light up whenever an old-fashioned cookie jar appears on the top shelf in the kitchen (if you don't deserve to be as happy as a six-year old having managed to sneak into your grandmother's pantry, climb up the shelves and treat yourself to a cookie for saving the world, the world's maybe not worth saving); he finds a tiny cornershop that sells cheap soap that claims to be sandalwood-scented but just smells odd and replaces the liquid soap that probably comes at 80$ a bottle in one of the bathrooms with it because he knows that sometimes Clint can't take the excess and the luxury that are all things Stark and needs cheap soap and a towel that's much too rough and worn-down for a place like this. He finds a battered but functional samowar together with a Grelka at a fleamarket, and he gives it to Natasha together with a jar of cherry varenje and loose tea, and Tony has the decency not to point out that he invented a device that makes perfect tea and that putting jam in tea is one of the most disgusting things he's ever seen when Natasha is very quiet for a moment and then hugs Bruce (for the first time after the Helicarrier incident. After that, the varenje becomes a regular occurrence for anniversaries both good and bad). He dedicates a corner in his lab to set up equipment to make mead, and he times it so that there is always a new batch to be tried whenever Thor visits (Bruce knows that Thor drinks the mead of the Gods, but that he treasures the Midgardian varieties and the effort his friends put into playing host more than he can express with a bone-crunching embrace and a smashed glass). And he throws the fancy coffee machine that came with his lab out on the first day, buys a much simpler one (one that makes coffee you can work through the night with, not one that makes macciatos and cappuccinos complete with chocolate sprinkles and the Stark logo in the foam), and gets up an hour before Tony so that when Tony stumbles into the lab, there is a mug of coffee atop the pile of scribbles, equations and ideas Bruce wants him to have a look at (they are both scientists. They understand each other).

Bruce doesn't know what part of the equation he is in the chaos theory that is the Avengers, but he knows that they function together somehow, and that over a couple of months and near-end-of-the-world-scenarios, the group of strangers he was stuck on a flying ship with has become one of close friends and as close to family as someone who turns into a green rage monster gets. He is grateful for that, and as all dysfunctional grateful people he can't express it with words. But he can express it with cookies and coffee and cheap soap, and he knows that between fluffy animals and finding his favourite movies in the database and his favourite type of Thai Curry on his desk, the others are grateful too.

Even if Tony chooses to express it by commissioning a painting of the Hulk in a frilly purple apron brandishing a feather-duster and a dish towel.


End file.
